I suppose maybe the counter-argument to that is that the technological advancements that come about as a result of finance pushing for them, propagate out to th

I suppose maybe the counter-argument to that is that the technological advancements that come about as a result of finance pushing for them, propagate out to the wider world and can help speed up the rate of discoveries as new technologies become available. I also have the feeling that quite often discoveries and advances are not really to do with the discoverer but to do with the fact that an idea's 'time has come'. Take Google for example, they revolutionized search, but supposing the founders had headed off to Goldman Sachs rather than doing their PhDs, what would have filled the gap? I think that the stage was set for new things to happen in the search area and that other researchers would have come up with similar ideas. I wouldn't want to say that the inventor is completely incidental to the discovery; I appreciate that there are brilliant people out there, and moments of inspiration, I just think that the world will steam-roller on with or without a particular person and we'll often end up at roughly the same place.